History and Progress of Education (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860 Excerpt: ...offer were set before the most eminent scholars of the time to take charge of them. Among those who accepted his invitation, and aided according to their ability, were Grimbald, a French monk, John, surnamed the Saxon, St. Neoth, Asser, subsequently his biographer, Plegmond, archbishop of Canterbury, Dunwulf, afterwards bishop of Worcester, Gerbert, bishop of Chester, Wulfsig, and Athelstan, bishop of London; and, most renowned of them all, John Scotus, called Erigena, to whom some writers attribute the origin of the scholastic philosophy. Oxford was, during Alfred's reign, and had been, indeed, for two or three centuries, renowned for its schools, connected, for the most part, with the monasteries. Under the genial influence which Alfred exerted in behalf of education, these schools were a popular resort for scholars; and hence some writers have attributed to him, but without any just authority, the establishment of the University of Oxford, --an event which, so far as its formal or public recognition was concerned, did not take place till nearly three centuries later. In England, however, as in France, the impulse given to education by its liberal and enlightened monarch, did not long survive his death, and the tenth century is usually reckoned, by English writers, the darkest period of its history. It can hardly be said, however, that the darkness was as profound over the whole of Europe as in the seventh century. We have already spoken of the Saracen conquests in Sicily and Spain, and of their cultivation of science and literature at a period when ignorance had overspread the rest of Europe. In the tenth century they were approaching that intellectual eminence, which, in the two succeeding centuries, they so fully maintained; and here and there a Christi...